Tuesday, 16 April 2013

Namie Amuro's Concert in Singapore Cancelled: My Views

OK. Sorry I'm not gonna blog about my daily life again this time round but this has been really affecting me for the past few days.

Here's the article on The Straits Times today on the cancellation of Namie Amuro's Concert here in Singapore posted on Namie Amuro's Facebook Fanpage.

(Click to enlarge)

Ok. To be honest, the reporter wanted to interview me.

But unfortunately I wasn't able to reply her on time due to work.

SO NOW I am gonna write my views here on my blog instead!

So here's my story...

Namie Amuro to have a concert here in Singapore

When I first got the news that the Queen of JPOP Amuro Namie MAY hold her concert for the 20th Anniversary Asia Tour here in Singapore, I was really excited and looking forward to it!

All my friends and I expected the tickets to be really expensive as we all understands how difficult it is to even be able to invite anyone from Japan over here. Not to mention the Queen of JPOP, Namie Amuro.

I expected the most expensive tickets to be around $300SGD and yes, after confirmation, the most expensvive tickets were priced at $288 excluding SISTIC fee which adds up to a total of $291.

Even though it is really expensive for just a concert but I feel that for someone so huge like Namie Amuro, the money is totally worth spending.

The sale of tickets begin

Like mentioned in my earlier post here, I couldn't decide if I should get the tickets because I'me afraid that I may not be in town on the concert day. However, I still decided to buy the tickets on the very day the sale of tickets began together with my friends.

NOTE: The 3 of us all bought the $288, most expensive tickets!

On the very day itself, I have 2 other friends that bought the same category tickets for the Queen of JPOP's concert.

Within a few hours, all $288 tickets were sold out. I even have a friend that went online to purchase from someone else who bought extra tickets and then sold the ticket to my friend.

NOTE: My friend tried her best to get the ticket from SISTIC, she was not able to. Thus had the need to purchase from another fan from some forum.

So who says there isn't enough fans in Singapore that are willing to pay such a steep price for a ticket to Namie Amuro's Concert?!

JPOP VS KPOP

I have to admit that nowadays here in Singapore, it may seem that JPOP is dying but NO! I do not believe so!

The fact that KPOP is being promoted a lot more than JPOP here in Singapore, does not equate that people supporting JPOP here is getting any lesser!

I'm sorry but around 80% - 90% of my friends are still super hardcore JPOP fans!

JPOP万歳！

Namie Amuro's concert was not sold out

Well, I did not go on to check on the sale of the tickets after making my purchase alright.

Like seriously, why would I, right?

And I did not see any promotion for Namie Amuro's concert anywhere in any form.

So I was thinking that her concert was selling so well that she didn't even need any form of promotion!

But no! That was not the case!

I saw only an ad ONCE on the big screen outside 313@Somerset just 2 weeks ago, which is like the 1st week of April?

I was really suprised and shocked when I saw that ad.

"OH?! They are finally promoting for her concert like NOW?!"

"Wait! So you mean her concert is not sold out yet?!"

After that, I saw stores like HMV and JRunway giving out her concert tickets are prizes for contests last week!

If you wanna count THOSE in as promotion...

Lack of promotion to the public here in Singapore

Honestly speaking, a lot of my friends did not even know that Namie Amuro is was coming to Singapore till last week?

There were actually A LOT of people who only got to know that Namie Amuro was supposed to come and hold her concert here AFTER such contests (e.g. HMV and JRunway) which was already just a few days BEFORE the concert was cancelled.

Can you imagine if you actually did win the tickets to Namie's concert like Tuesday and on Friday night news were released online stating that the concert has been cancelled and on Sunday you saw the news on the newspaper reporting it!!!

And to make it worst, there was actually ads still on Saturday promoting the concert!

Not forgeting the fact that people can STILL make their purchase for the concert right now as I'm typing this super long blog post!

Like WTF right?!

To be honest, if I do not have hardcore Namie Amuro's fans friends around me, I would most probably NOT know that the Queen of JPOP is coming, too!

Here's a screenshot of a fan from the concert's event page created by Namie Amuro's Facebook Fanpage.

Can you imagine?!

Even fans that joined the Facebook Fan Page are not aware that Namie was coming to Singapore till the 29th of March which is 3 weeks ago?!

So why are people pointing fingers and say that JPOP here in Singapore is dying and cannot attract fans when in the first place the concert was NOT being promoted at all!!!

Avex Announced Concert Cancelled

Last Saturday, I woke up to the email stating that the concert has been cancelled.

I was very very disappointed.

I specially request an off day from work to be able to go to her concert.

I've set aside money wanting to purchase her concert merchandise!

I'm already prepared to go for her concert in her previous concert's tee!

I've been waiting for a JPOP concert to be held here ever since I've been a fan of JPOP 14 years ago when I was in Primary School.

I was so depressed that very day I couldn't get my head into work that day and yes, I almost cried.

Finally when my dream was just about to come true, our dear local promoter Midas Promotion just had to drag me back to hell.

All because they did not even make the effort to promote Namie'a concert!

Like what many commented on Facebook, "Namie Amuro is no small fry".

If they expect the concert to be sold out by only the few posts on Facebook from Namie Amuro's Fanpage, then they are so wrong.

For goodness sake, how many people are posting and sharing and uploading tons of things onto their timeline every second.

What makes you so sure that more than half of the people in Singapore would actually get to see that very post on Namie's concert?!

I personally have quite a number of friends who do not even use Facebook or any social media platforms.

So how on earth do you think those Facebook posts are gonna reach these people?!

What if these people who are not on the social media are actually fans of Namie but they totally lost the chance of even knowing that their idol is coming and would be holding a concert?!

I guess the only time they actually got to know about the concert is 1 or 2 weeks ago OR even worst, after this whole mess after the concert is cancelled on newspapers.

And slowly, this disappointment turns into fustration.

Why wouldn't Midas Promotion just give us a proper explaination?!

(Screenshot on my iPhone less than 20mins after I received the email notification)

Although the reason of why the concert is cancelled is being changed from "issues concerning local promoter" to "due to local technical reasons", it is still because of local promoter in Japanese.

(Click to go to Namie Amuro's Official Website's Annoucement Page)

「シンガポール側主催者の都合により」

YES! There are actually A LOT of Singaporeans who can read Japanese!

My wishes

So what it seems to me is that the cancellation of the concert has been confirmed be it whether Midas admits it or not.

If they are going to stick to their word and say that the concert is going to resume, even if it feels damn silly, I would still go down to the Indoor Stadium and see what's gonna happen.

I just hope that this will not be the reason for any other JPOP artistes to leave Singapore out of their considerations for their concert tours in future.

I'm sure if they had worked with a promotion company that is way more responsible, things may not be so right now.